Courthouse (28 page)

“Your Honor, I just can't stand by idly and let Mister Conte accuse the District Attorney's office of publicity grandstanding.”

“Oh, not the office, Your Honor,” said Marc. “Just Mister O'Connor.”

“Gentlemen, may I now have something to say without being interrupted?” asked the Judge. He looked from O'Connor to Marc. “Judge Crawford did set the bail in this case. And, as Mister Conte correctly points out, Judge Crawford is, as I am, a Supreme Court Judge. I cannot overrule his decision, nor do I believe that it is proper that I even consider this application. I must suggest that this matter of bail for Mrs. Wainwright be taken up again with Judge Crawford if you so desire, Mister O'Connor.”

“Your Honor has jurisdiction to set the bail now that this matter has come before Your Honor for arraignment,” said O'Connor.

“I do not have the jurisdiction to overrule Judge Crawford,” said the Judge.

“Unless, of course,” Marc said, now wanting to twist the knife in O'Connor's hand before the press, “there is new information that the District Attorney has to show that Mrs. Wainwright is a poorer bail risk than she was when the bail was set?”

“Mister O'Connor?” the Judge inquired.

“I'll take this up with Judge Crawford, Your Honor, if you say he is the one with the jurisdiction.”

“Very well, present bail continued,” said the Judge.

Marc and Mrs. Wainwright walked away from the bench.

“Whew. That O'Connor is awful,” said Toni Wainwright.”

O'Connor walked along the middle aisle, making his way toward the back door and the crowd of reporters now huddled there. “You have a lot of nerve with the circus bit,” O'Connor complained to Marc as he walked past him.

“It's all part of the day's work,” replied Marc. “You have a job to do, and so do I. Now how about co-operating with me and giving me a voluntary bill of particulars in this case?” Marc asked. He waited for O'Connor to blow up.

“Co-operation? Hell'll freeze first,” O'Connor replied. “You make your motion, and I'll oppose it.” He stormed off toward the back.

“How come he hates us?” asked Mrs. Wainwright.

“He doesn't,” replied Marc.

“He does seem unusually overwrought about this case,” said Rutley, who, along with Cahill, had joined Marc and Mrs. Wainwright.

“He's just making a play for the newsmen,” said Marc. “He knew that's what the Judge would say about the bail, but he wanted to make the play anyway.”

“Do we have to go through the crowd of newspaper people?” asked Mrs. Wainwright.

“There are very few exits from this building,” said Marc. “The press will have them all covered. There's no need to run away, however. You haven't done anything.”

“I know, but I don't want to go through all their questions, or be on everybody's television screen tonight as the rich husband killer.”

“Mister Cahill,” said Marc, “could you get Judge Crawford to do another favor for you?”

“Yes, I'm sure if the Judge could do anything for us, he will,” replied Cahill.

“Perhaps if you go to the Judge's chambers on the seventeenth floor, either the Judge or his secretary will be there. The judges have a private entrance on the side street, Leonard Street, and they have a private elevator going down to that entrance. If Judge Crawford will cooperate, you can all go up to the seventeenth floor in the judges' elevator behind this courtroom. From there you can take the other private elevator down to the side street.”

“That's great,” said Toni Wainwright. “Do it, Jim.”

“Why don't we all go together,” said Cahill.

“Perhaps it's better that Mrs. Wainwright waits here until the coast is clear,” said Marc. “It might embarrass the Judge if we all went to his chambers, particularly since Mrs. Wainwright is a defendant.”

“Right,” said Cahill turning. “Oh, Rutley, go down to the car and tell the driver to be ready to move around to Leonard Street.” Cahill walked toward the back.

“Your keeper is here,” Mrs. Wainwright said to Marc.

Marc looked around. Franco had entered the court. Marc waved and walked to the back. The two of them stepped into the corridor. O'Connor was there, talking to three reporters. One of the reporters came over to Marc.

“When is Mrs. Wainwright coming out?” the reporter asked.

“Couple of minutes,” Marc replied.

“What kind of defense are you going to have in this case?” the same reporter asked.

“I can't comment on a pending case,” Marc said flatly. “Excuse me, will you? Anything the matter?” he asked Franco.

“Nothing. I just wanted to make sure you were still here,” he replied. “I went away for a bit while you were here, and I wanted to be sure I didn't miss you.”

“I'm almost finished.”

“I got some interesting information,” Franco added.

“What is it?”

“Your wife asked me to go out to Butler aviation, the private air field over at La Guardia airport,” said Franco.

“Yes?”

“That's where I was just now. I checked out Zack Lord's plane for the evening of the fourteenth of August, the night Wainwright was killed. His plane didn't leave until two-thirty in the morning. About an hour or so
after
Wainwright was killed.” Franco waited for Marc to react. He was pleased with himself.

“Two-thirty?” Marc repeated. “You think that ties in with your concept about someone else—maybe Zack Lord—shooting Wainwright while his wife was drunk out of her head?”

“It could,” said Franco. “You told us to work on it. That's what we're doing.”

Marc smiled.

“What are you smiling about?” Franco asked. “I do something dumb?”

“No. I'm just smiling because if I leave it to you and Maria you'll come up with something wild. And make it sound logical to boot. Coming out of your mouth, the possible rises out of the impossible. But objectively, what does it really mean? So Lord didn't leave until two-thirty. The other things we discussed, the why, the how, getting Wainwright to go there in the first place. These are the imponderables of real significance.”

“Give us some time, we're working on them,” said Franco.

Marc laughed. “Don't get lost now. I'm almost finished. Then we're going to the Federal District Court in Brooklyn. I have to make a new bail application for The Crusher. Now that he's spent the weekend without making bail, maybe I can get it down from a hundred thousand.”

“I'll be right out front,” replied Franco. “What do you really think about this Zack Lord thing?”

“I don't know. It's really crazy, of course. But follow it up and see where it leads. Later on I'm going to see Mrs. Wainwright again. Alone,” he added. “I hope to find her sober this time.”

“Fat chance,” said Franco.

19

Tuesday, August 22, 4:15
P.M.

Marc and Michael Malone, the assistant U.S. Attorney, stood outside the Magistrate's courtroom in the Federal District Courthouse. Malone was smoking a cigarette. He and Marc both kept glancing into the courtroom to see if the Magistrate was still conducting a previous arraignment.

“You think Pellegrino will get a hearing here today?” Marc asked, not really expecting an affirmative answer.

“Not today, Marc,” said Malone. “This is only on for a bail application.” He took a puff on his cigarette. His eyes narrowed as the smoke swirled upward.

Marc pushed the door to the courtroom open slightly, peered in, then let the door shut again.

“When was the last time you were involved in a hearing in this court?” Marc asked.

“I can't remember,” Malone said with a slight smile.

“I can't remember when I was either,” said Marc. “I don't think I ever had a preliminary hearing in the Federal Court.”

“We usually indict before the hearing.”

“What's the sense of having a preliminary hearing procedure outlined in the law, when in fact it's just there for the hell of it? Nobody ever gets a hearing around here,” said Marc.

“The grand jury is your hearing, Marc,” Malone said. “You don't really need a Magistrate's hearing too.”

“How come, if the federal system is so fair, you refuse to let the defendant have a hearing so he'll know exactly what evidence he's faced with?” asked Marc. He was feeling argumentative as he waited.

“Do you get hearings over in the State Court?” Malone asked.

“Yes, fairly often,” Marc replied. “At least you've got a shot at one over there.”

“I think this court is much fairer than the state courts anyway,” said Malone. “It's run better, more lawyerlike, more dignity. And when you get an indictment here, the defendant knows he's not going to get the courthouse in plea bargaining. Over here, you have to face the music.”

“You must think you're still in grammar school—where neatness counts. The state courts have twenty times the cases you have over here.”

Malone shrugged.

“Do you think merely because you're less flexible than a D.A. that that makes this court fairer?”

“It's not inflexibility, Marc.”

“Oh yes it is,” Marc countered. “You get an indictment, and then you sit like prima donnas and refuse to discuss the plea, the sentence, and if the defendant doesn't cop out, you go out of your way to sink him with an all-embracing count of conspiracy to commit a crime.”

“What's wrong with conspiracy as an indictable offense?”

“Everything—when it's used as a substitute for solid evidence of a crime,” said Marc. “Clarence Darrow, who I'm not so crazy about in the first place, was very correct when he said conspiracy, the crime of thinking about doing something, has been the dearest weapon of every tyrant in recorded history. The way the judges around here charge the jury, the audience is lucky they're not convicted of conspiracy.”

Malone peered into the courtroom again. “Let's go,” he said, dropping his cigarette to the floor. “I'll go along with thirty-five thousand dollars bail, if that'll help you out,” Malone whispered.

“Are we playing games?” asked Marc. “If it's so unimportant, make it five thousand.”

“I can't do that just now, Marc.” Malone was holding the door half open as they spoke. “Things aren't that cool in the streets yet. You know why this is being done. Do you want it, or do you want to argue in front of the Magistrate?”

“I know he's not going to do me any favors. Make it twenty-five, and I'll go along with it for today.”

“Make it twenty-five then,” agreed Malone. He pushed the door open to the courtroom.

“Where to now?” asked Franco as he drove back toward Manhattan across the Brooklyn Bridge.

“I told you I made an appointment to talk with Mrs. Wainwright this afternoon,” said Marc. “I have to have more information from her.”

“You also said I didn't have to go with you, again. Right?” asked Franco.

Marc laughed. “Not if you don't want to.”

“Nah. The two of us don't get along too good,” Franco cursed softly as another car, speeding to Manhattan, cut too closely in front of them. “You think now that the bail was lowered to twenty-five, that The Crusher's going to hit the street?”

“I don't know,” replied Marc. “Patsy said he'd try to make it today. If he can't, I'll just make another application in a couple of days to get it reduced even further. The way Malone is acting right now, that may not be too difficult.”

Franco nodded slowly. “They got it by the balls, those Feds, don't they. They can get whatever they want, even put you in jail a few days to cool you off, and everybody else's got to like it.”

Marc was silent. He was thinking how true, and at the same time, how frightening such a prospect was. A government which reveled in law and order, which could brand certain people criminal by means of publicity, which could break into homes, trammel constitutional privileges, was too close to Nazism for comfort. Hitler was put in office on a platform of law and order, on promises to clean up crime in the streets. Every time Marc heard the terms law and order, crime in the streets, he remembered Hitler. He also thought, however, that as long as he and other defense attorneys could keep talking, defending, the system was reasonably okay. They would be among the first to be quieted; but then it would be too late.

As the car neared Manhattan, City Hall loomed majestically across the park at the foot of the bridge. Franco turned the car onto the cloverleaf that led to the East River Drive.

“Remind me, Franco, to see George Tishler in the next couple of days. I have some information he wanted about the courts.”

“Okay, boss,” Franco said. “And, okay,” he added quickly, “I won't call you boss.” He and Marc both laughed. “You want me to drop you off at Mrs. Wainwright's apartment?”

“No. She said she was going to be shopping. So I made an appointment to meet her at five-thirty at Bob Dick's.”

“That's that little restaurant on Fifty-sixth Street off Park?” asked Franco.

“Right.”

“You think it's a good idea meeting this one at a restaurant where there's liquor?”

“I'll talk fast,” Marc kidded.

The car rolled along easily on the highway until they slowed into some heavy traffic at Twenty-third Street, which was bumper to bumper, until Thirty-fifth Street, where there was a stalled car with its hood up. A woman was at the rear of the car waving a handkerchief to the oncoming traffic. A man had his head inside the motor compartment. Once past, traffic rolled more quickly, until another stalled car under the tunnel at Fifty-fifth Street slowed them again. Finally, they reached the Sixty-third Street exit where they headed across and then downtown.

“You want me to wait for you?” asked Franco, as he stopped the car in front of Bob Dick's canopy. He looked at his watch. “It's a quarter to six now.”